New York Times Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd doesn’t seem to have much use for religion in spite (because?) of her good Catholic upbringing. When she does talk about matters of faith, it’s often related to her family, as today’s column is.

Lede:

Last Christmas I got a jolt.

I learned that my brother Kevin collects crèches. They were all over his house, crammed onto every mantle, table, counter, lawn and closet — 17 in all, including the modest plastic stable our mom put over the fireplace when we were little.

Dowd was perturbed, but also intrigued:

I was curious enough about the manger mania that when he told me he’d been invited to the Friends of the Creche annual convention in New Haven one weekend in November, I asked if I could go, too.

What transpires after that is a sort of Marlon Perkins Wild-Kingdom-of-God episode, with Dowd observing the crècheniks in their natural habitat. It’s standard-issue MoDo, mildly irreverent, mildly irrelevant.

What was surprising – how mild the reader reaction was. Virtually all of the comments I saw were positive or benign.

Dowd must be losing her fastball.

Or maybe it’s just the Christmas spirit.